Post-session with Ascension Dance 29th April 2024.

After being with Ascension and just wanted to say that we had loads of fun it was really really lovely and we got them to do a lot of kind of our dance theatrey physical theatre clowning sort of games and exercises with us, because we were like let’s see if they’ll be up for stepping out of their comfort zones and just having a bit of fun and a bit of a play. We talked about the characters in the show and looked at this like power dynamic that happens obviously that’s one of the themes that comes up within the project, the acting on climate project and work and they just went with us and they really met us were we were at and they had loads of fun and we ask them for some feedback afterwards and some of the feedback that was shared one of the girls was like “I really enjoyed being able to express myself in a different way” which was obviously lovely to hear, and yeah, one of the others said “I really enjoyed it gave me permission to be weird” which is again lovely to hear that they felt like they could be themselves and they had permission to be their true self or authentic self a little bit more and then another one said “it was really interesting to see how some people at the beginning were alittle bit more reserved and that how actually overtime they sort of opened up a little bit more and were really looking at yeah feeling less aware of what was going on in the outside, in regards to being seen by others but felt more confident to just lean in to what we were doing”, which was so nice, such articulate young people, and so we have left them with a task, which is a very gear shifty thing, to get them to write about some of the pressures that they feel, maybe from social media, from peers, trends, whatever that might be, and or to write about how it feels to be a young person existing in the world today, and obviously this is all under the umbrella of climate and power and stuff like that. And then what we are going to do with them the next time we see them, we are going to work with them with the writing they create between now and then to show them how we would use the sort of clowning, fantastical, over the top characters that they have created with us today, to use dark comedy, through physical clowning practice to show or present these more difficult ideas around what we might be feeling about existing int he world today. Ben said they have had lots of pressure recently and it is really nice for them to be invited into a really playful creative space that they might not be used to, so yeah it was lovely.